biopredator
New Member
Guys,
I recently stumbled onto this site and really love all the Predator costumes everyone has made. I really want to buy a P1 kit from Termock (spelling?) next year. I've made some creative Halloween costumes over the years but nothing as elaborate as what many on here have done. My brothers talked me into making a Hulk Costume so we could be the Avengers for Halloween this year so I started on the build early last month. I am 60 hours into the build and wanted to share it with everyone here.
First off we wanted the hulk to be big but movable so we created Hulk Concept Drawings to show Hulks desired proportions and where a person would lie inside the suit, see diagram:
Now was the job of how to build it. We bought a bunch of couch foam from the craft store, a lycra suit, and couple cans of spray glue. I already had an electric carving knife from cutting custom slots in my rifle cases. I bought two rolls of duct tape and plastic wrap to make a mannequin of my body size.
The mannequin was the easy part, except we quickly discovered to put short strips on rather than having my wife wrap it around my arms, turning my hands purple. LOL
Then I took the diagrams and projected them onto the wall, we had to do some slight tweeks as we found that the proportions of the persons image we used was not the same as mine, I'm 6'2" 195 lbs so it made the Hulk slightly wider, we lined up the arm profiles with mine as well as the bottom of the feet the top of the head and the crotch. Once projected image on the wall matched my body proportions then my wife and I traced the outline of the hulk on wax paper and hung it on the wall for a side, front, and rear picture. Then I drew the muscles inside the outline freehand. Here are pic's of the wax paper drawings:
Now placing my dummy in lycra suit in front of the drawings, holding foam in hands and carving knife in the other I look at the drawing dumbfounded for a while trying to figure out how I'm going to attach shoulders that will be over 5" away from the dummies and a back that is over 10" from the dummies back. Finally we figured it out, we would cut truss's to Hulks Profile on the side and the back and then glue foam to the trusses. Now this was no easy task and took many many hours attaching each piece of foam, but one piece at the time we got each part figured out.
The chest, ribs and abs were easy, followed by the bicepts and shoulders, the tricepts were more difficult as the size became much larger and further away from the body and required multiple pieces of foam to be glued together. The back was very difficult as it required significant amounts of foam and several mounting pieces to secure the large pieces of foam to the lyrca suit and trusses. I basically carved each muscles shape with an electric carving knife to make it look realistic. It took some getting used to but it worked itself out.
Here you can see the upper body is nearly finished, I did eventually redo both front deltoids in the shoulders and one of the bicepts as well as the traps to improve the proportions. The forearms were worry-some because I had to glue approx 8" of foam to the rear and tie the front into the tricepts and bicepts. At first the forearms looked like giant drumsticks and but we carved some muscle definition and did some reshaping and they turned out great. We wanted the elbow to be able to bend but there would have to be a large section that would separate in order to do so, I was worried it would look dumb when the arm was bent but it doesn't it looks very natural.
My wife did the hands, she traced my hand profile and used 1" foam for the palms and 1/2" foam for the fingers. Initially she used 1" foam for both and the fingers and palms but it looked like mickey mouse hands so she redid the fingers. The hands in the left picture are 1/2" fingers and I believe the right picture is 1" fingers. The final hands have braces inside the palms separating the fingers and all three knuckles of each finger are slightly bent to look more natural. The hands allow about half of each of my fingers to insert into the fingers so I can move each individual finger (really cool looking! you will see in the video below).
Once we had the upper body done then I wanted to make sure we could get it off the mannequin so it was time for its first test fit. We unzipped the back and the dummy came right out, the lycra suit was still once piece and I was worried that if we left it as one piece it would be too bulky and stiff to climb into and get out of once the costume was complete.
The fitting went great, the upper body moves very easily and looks realistic. We were all extremely happy with how cool it turned out. My daughters had fun making fun of hulks big square butt (which we fixed later on) and they loved my skinny grey tights. LOL
Here is a video of the first test fitting:
I recently stumbled onto this site and really love all the Predator costumes everyone has made. I really want to buy a P1 kit from Termock (spelling?) next year. I've made some creative Halloween costumes over the years but nothing as elaborate as what many on here have done. My brothers talked me into making a Hulk Costume so we could be the Avengers for Halloween this year so I started on the build early last month. I am 60 hours into the build and wanted to share it with everyone here.
First off we wanted the hulk to be big but movable so we created Hulk Concept Drawings to show Hulks desired proportions and where a person would lie inside the suit, see diagram:
Now was the job of how to build it. We bought a bunch of couch foam from the craft store, a lycra suit, and couple cans of spray glue. I already had an electric carving knife from cutting custom slots in my rifle cases. I bought two rolls of duct tape and plastic wrap to make a mannequin of my body size.
The mannequin was the easy part, except we quickly discovered to put short strips on rather than having my wife wrap it around my arms, turning my hands purple. LOL
Then I took the diagrams and projected them onto the wall, we had to do some slight tweeks as we found that the proportions of the persons image we used was not the same as mine, I'm 6'2" 195 lbs so it made the Hulk slightly wider, we lined up the arm profiles with mine as well as the bottom of the feet the top of the head and the crotch. Once projected image on the wall matched my body proportions then my wife and I traced the outline of the hulk on wax paper and hung it on the wall for a side, front, and rear picture. Then I drew the muscles inside the outline freehand. Here are pic's of the wax paper drawings:
Now placing my dummy in lycra suit in front of the drawings, holding foam in hands and carving knife in the other I look at the drawing dumbfounded for a while trying to figure out how I'm going to attach shoulders that will be over 5" away from the dummies and a back that is over 10" from the dummies back. Finally we figured it out, we would cut truss's to Hulks Profile on the side and the back and then glue foam to the trusses. Now this was no easy task and took many many hours attaching each piece of foam, but one piece at the time we got each part figured out.
The chest, ribs and abs were easy, followed by the bicepts and shoulders, the tricepts were more difficult as the size became much larger and further away from the body and required multiple pieces of foam to be glued together. The back was very difficult as it required significant amounts of foam and several mounting pieces to secure the large pieces of foam to the lyrca suit and trusses. I basically carved each muscles shape with an electric carving knife to make it look realistic. It took some getting used to but it worked itself out.
Here you can see the upper body is nearly finished, I did eventually redo both front deltoids in the shoulders and one of the bicepts as well as the traps to improve the proportions. The forearms were worry-some because I had to glue approx 8" of foam to the rear and tie the front into the tricepts and bicepts. At first the forearms looked like giant drumsticks and but we carved some muscle definition and did some reshaping and they turned out great. We wanted the elbow to be able to bend but there would have to be a large section that would separate in order to do so, I was worried it would look dumb when the arm was bent but it doesn't it looks very natural.
My wife did the hands, she traced my hand profile and used 1" foam for the palms and 1/2" foam for the fingers. Initially she used 1" foam for both and the fingers and palms but it looked like mickey mouse hands so she redid the fingers. The hands in the left picture are 1/2" fingers and I believe the right picture is 1" fingers. The final hands have braces inside the palms separating the fingers and all three knuckles of each finger are slightly bent to look more natural. The hands allow about half of each of my fingers to insert into the fingers so I can move each individual finger (really cool looking! you will see in the video below).
Once we had the upper body done then I wanted to make sure we could get it off the mannequin so it was time for its first test fit. We unzipped the back and the dummy came right out, the lycra suit was still once piece and I was worried that if we left it as one piece it would be too bulky and stiff to climb into and get out of once the costume was complete.
The fitting went great, the upper body moves very easily and looks realistic. We were all extremely happy with how cool it turned out. My daughters had fun making fun of hulks big square butt (which we fixed later on) and they loved my skinny grey tights. LOL
Here is a video of the first test fitting:
